In the Midst of Life

of Leah stripping a bed, manipulating an iron and ironing board whilst clinging to a Zimmer frame, then making the bed in the middle of the night, sent a shiver down my spine. But I kept very quiet on that one. I have never ironed a sheet, to my recollection. My attitude is – if you can’t give a thing a shake and put it on the bed it’s not worth keeping! But I could hardly say that, could I? I didn’t want to end up in her ‘disgusted’ book.
    Her social life intensified. She couldn’t get out, so people came to her. She revived her former bridge parties, and played with ferocious zeal, I was told. Bridge is a very difficult game, requiring a quick mind and memory skills. I resigned myself to being wiped off the Scrabble board, although she had the kindness to tell me my game was improving. I found, to my surprise, that I was concentrating fiercely, working out all sorts of sly strategies to outmanoeuvre her, but I never did, she was too quick for me. Then I realised, not at all to my credit, that I was getting irritated, and was determined to beat her. But the craftier I became, the more did she, and she was always one step ahead. Incidentally, she also kept the score, adding it up in her head as we went along. I tried score keeping once and got into such a muddle that she took the task from me without a word.
    Steve and Sandy were very good to her, coming in each day to see if she was all right and if she needed anything. They had a baby who was between a year and eighteen months old at that time, and they brought him in to visit her every evening when he’d been bathed and was in his pyjamas ready for bed. Some toys were kept in Leah’s flat so that he could play. The two seemed to love their time together, and I have seen that little boy in the hallway, crawling towards her flat and lifting his hands up towards the door. Even after she had gone, he continued to do this for several months.
    In February, Leah had her 103 rd birthday. The whole family, including great-grandchildren, came over from Israel. The flat was so full of flowers you could hardly move.
    Leah was determined to do more things for herself. She startedby walking one hundred yards down the road and back, unaided. The next thing we knew she had been to Tesco, which was a quarter of a mile away. ‘I like to choose my own things. I don’t like people shopping for me – they always get it wrong,’ she said. In early March she said, ‘I’ve been up to the Town Hall today to get my bus pass. I will need it when the weather gets better.’
    Then the ceiling fell in the bathroom. It sounded like an explosion. No one was hurt, but it broke the wash-hand basin into two pieces and cracked the lavatory pan. It would have been a shock to anyone, but Leah took it in her stride, and in the end my sympathies lay with the builders and the insurance men; the stick she gave them about repairs!
    Her life force was incredible. She was absolutely determined to cope, and seemed to accept every difficulty as a challenge to be overcome –
nothing
was going to beat her. Nobody knew the mental and physical effort this cost her, no one saw the tears of frustration as muscular weakness took its toll, or the relief as she sank into bed at night. No one saw the effort it cost her to get up in the morning. She once said, ‘When I wake up, I can hardly move, my limbs feel so heavy and I ache all over. But I have to make the effort. Sometimes it takes me half an hour to get out of bed. Can you believe it? Half an hour just to get up!’ Then she would have a bath, which loosened her up, and, dressed, did her hair, creamed her face, and manoeuvred her Zimmer frame around several awkward corners to go to the kitchen for breakfast. It took her three hours. Many people twenty years younger would simply have stayed in bed and expected someone else to look after them. Not Leah – she would look after herself, thank you. Renewed pleas from her family to go to Israel were all rejected.
    It must have been early June when Sandy from next door had cooked a meal for Leah and she said, ‘I don’t really feel like eating.’
    ‘Try it, dear, it’s nice.’
    ‘Yes, of course I will. It looks lovely. You’re very kind.’ But Leah couldn’t eat it.
    Quite quickly after that, Leah suffered from nausea andvomiting, and became constipated. ‘If only I could open my bowels I would be all right,’ she said. ‘What I need is an enema and a good clear out.’
    I was